15-plus days later, New Canaan Branch makes slippery return to service

Snow on the train tracks didn’t matter Thursday morning, Nov. 8, because New Canaan trains hadn’t run since the Sunday before Sandy hit because of hurricane damage. But train service returned Tuesday morning, Nov. 13 — but not without new problems. (Martin V. Hersam photo)

After 15 days without trains on the New Canaan Branch, the return of service was slippery — and late Tuesday.

New Canaan was the last of Metro-North Railroad’s train lines to resume service since trains were shut down Sunday evening, Oct. 28, in anticipation of Hurricane Sandy. The New Haven Line, the busiest commuter rail line in the nation, was running with partial service by Thursday, Nov. 1, and full service that Friday. By Monday, Nov. 5, the two of the New Haven Line’s three branch lines — Danbury and Waterbury — were back in service. But the New Canaan branch took another eight days before it resumed.

Once trains were running again Tuesday morning, Nov. 13, they were having trouble making it up the incline near Talmadge Hill. Metro-North said part of the reason was because the tracks hadn’t been used by trains for more than two weeks. Leaves were leading to rail wheel slippage, which caused delays up to 30 minutes on the main line, but up to nearly an hour on the New Canaan line Tuesday.

New Canaan trains were having such trouble getting up the hill to the Next Station to Heaven that Metro-North dispatched a large contraption from its Harlem Line to clean the rails of slimy, crushed leaves that wreak havoc on trains this time of year.

“Wouldn’t you know that the day we reintroduce service, we have a slippery, wet day,” Marjorie Anders, a Metro-North spokesman, told the Advertiser Tuesday morning.

On Monday night, the railroad used a steel brush scrubber system it developed to clean off the New Canaan branch line rails. “They are called rail scrubbers and are used to actually scrub the slime from the crushed leaves,” Anders said. “Apparently it did not get all the slime off.”

“They are now bringing out the bigger guns,” she said of a rail cleaning system, also developed by Metro-North, called “Water World.”

“It’s a giant tanker that forces water out of a flat spray nozzle at 10,000 psi,” Anders said Tuesday. “It would cut a brick in half. That is how powerful it is. It is being dispatched from the Harlem Line to the New Canaan line today.”

While it usually operates at night, Metro-North used Water World during the day Tuesday, while replacing midday train service with buses, so that the evening commute could run up the hill to New Canaan.

Buses were used Tuesday — as they had been since Monday, Nov. 5 — midday and train service resumed by 4 p.m. to and from New Canaan.

“Just got the great news that New Canaan Branch rail riders will finally be able to board a train from town for the first time since Oct. 28,” First Selectman Rob Mallozzi told the Advertiser Monday. “Considering that so many choose to reside in New Canaan due to accessible direct train service to Manhattan, the absence of this train service created a true hardship for our residents. I am pleased that the efforts led by myself, Nick Williams, along with our state senators, resulted in the resumption of this vital service.”

The line, which runs from New Canaan to Stamford, and includes three stations between those two, serves about 1,800 during the morning peak rush. Since the buses started running last week, they served about 600 morning commuters, the MTA told the Advertiser last week.

The New Haven Line serves about 70,000 morning commuters.

The New Canaan line saw more than 50 trees fall on tracks and wires along the line during Hurricane Sandy, Mallozzi said. The railroad focused its manpower along the main line, Anders told the Advertiser on Thursday, Nov. 8. The goal was to work on the branch line midweek and reopen it by Friday, Nov. 9, but Wednesday’s nor’easter delayed those plans. Work finally started along the New Canaan line this past weekend.

“We have to prioritize our manpower and that’s what we did,” Anders said last week.

She said that the railroad was able to return service to the New Haven Line just days after Hurricane Sandy “despite a tremendous amount of damage to the main line. We put it back into service with just two of the four tracks repaired. But we need all four. We have had to continue to work on the other two to expand service and to provide the level of on-time reliability that people have come accustomed to. We need the capacity in case we need to maneuver around disabled trains or another downed tree.”

Anders said the railroad had just about had all four tracks in service on the New Haven Line on Wednesday morning, Nov. 7. “And we had in fact deployed several crews to New Canaan,” she said. “Then the storm struck. We were working on a shoestring. We are back because of the storm damage from the nor’easter. We have more trees and down (and wires) near Cos Cob. Also we had some damage at the Norwalk bridge. We had fiberglass insulating rods shorting out; they had during Sandy. But they got patched back together. But this storm came along and they shorted out again. Luckily because of Sandy we got new ones delivered. We are installing them today.”

We expect all the main line work will be done tomorrow,” Anders said Thursday. “And we hope to devote the entire weekend, if weather cooperates, to the New Canaan branch.”

“I can’t emphasis enough that our lineman who work with these high-tension wire are tired,” she said. “They have been working 16-hour shifts for nearly two weeks. But they are going to keep going. It is astonishing the pride our workers take.”